well. technology innovation. developments around russia we've got this huge earth covered. it's a secret report that the cia doesn't want you to see details about the intent and hanssen interrogation tactics used on terror suspects six thousand pages of u.s. military secrets that could you lose the public eye indefinitely had a report from capitol hill. and speaking of secrets wal-mart has a few of its own the company shelled out millions to lobby for the government to roll back regulations it's also good at keeping scandals quiet coming up we'll look at wal-mart's big business blitz. and if you thought those small seats on public buses invaded your personal space get ready for this homeland security is about to up the ante by installing microphones on public transit to record your

conversations or you paid a bus fare will give you a couple reasons to keep your voice down. it's tuesday december eleventh five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz a wall and you're watching r t. we begin today with a report that could shed some light on the dark practice of torture this week the senate intelligence committee is set to vote on a report that details the use of enhanced interrogation techniques under the bush administration this includes everything from stress positions to waterboarding much of it said to have happened at the guantanamo bay prison the roughly six thousand page report has been in the works for three years now the senate is finally voting to approve it but according to senator dianne feinstein who heads the commute committee the report the public may never get to see it from our two political

correspondent christine freeze out joins us now from capitol hill hi christina so can you tell us more about what's in this report. well really was one of the central goals of the reported to find out the extent to which these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques led to valuable information levy's intelligence offers officers the information that in turn led them to terrorists and a lot of those on inside of you i have spoken on the condition of anonymity have said it's not much that the hanssen derogation methods really were not that effective in leading to any information as much as it may have produced good bits of information here and there it also produced a whole lot of bad information about one of the really interesting things here live is what you mentioned and that is that this report is not fair payer funded six thousand page report may not be published anytime soon if at all what we do know is by connecting them dots we did hear earlier in the year by the chairman of the

senate intelligence committee senator danforth dianne feinstein she spoke to reporters about how the report was coming along and was asked by one reporter if there was a connection between these enhanced interrogation techniques and the killing and capturing of osama the lawn here's their response. they have gone through more than cherry million e-mails cables pieces of paper. looking for this today. the answer to your question is no nothing has been found to indicate that this came out of guantanamo. as far as why this won't be released so far as some of the other things contained in this report there are a whole lot of theories out there one of the theories is simply that whether or not the american public should be aware of this and it depends on where you fall if you think that knowledge is power is one side and the other side would be sort of

ignorance is bliss' a whole lot of people operating under that i spoke to colonel morris davis yesterday about about the back of the senate intelligence committee would most likely be keeping this under wraps he is a former prosecutor at guantanamo bay left the job because he strongly disagreed with some of these techniques in the way they were being used i asked him why he thought this report was being kept hidden and here's his response. i think a lot of these cases is not about the future harm which is always what cited national securities in jeopardy and if we tell you know what's going on it will impact future operations but more often than not it's just trying to hide the embarrassment of what happened in the past because this investigation has been going going on for three years and was looking back at policies that were ended a number of years ago so this is not a an ongoing future operation and it's past history but i think there may be some embarrassment there that people would like to keep under wraps. so again liz this

is just one theory one perspective but it is one that if it works taking a look at enhanced interrogation is one word for things that you mentioned waterboarding sleep deprivation this is called by a whole lot of other people simply torture and a lot of people look at this period in our history as one of the darkest pictures that came from abu ghraib and guantanamo bay these are things that a lot of people do want to be want to keep hidden and want to be forgotten about now and that is why it seems people wanted to have this investigation into what exactly has transpired at these places but not everybody was on board with this can you tell us why republicans were opposed to the investigation into torture. yeah it's really interesting so putting together this report actually spoke about three years and one of the reasons it took so long is because going to republican tom cole was parading with the investigation many of them boycotted it overall they

said that it wasn't necessary or they said that it couldn't be done because so many other investigations going on now now they really back out back in two thousand and nine during this time investigators under the obama justice department gave the green light for a separate investigation not a separate investigation with a criminal investigation into whether or not what the cia was doing with some of these these methods they were using whether they could face criminal charges now that case was closed and no criminal charges fired filed so it's really interesting but i'll be honest was it's not just all republican president obama himself the less than enthusiastic about sort of looking at the criminal aspect under former president george w. bush a lot of the thought process here is we want to just leave this in the past and try to move forward the president obama did upon becoming friends. didn't outlaw many

of these methods as you may remember and so they don't choose to you know to look at it a lot of republicans echo what members of the bush administration said at the time especially you know vice president dick cheney that they believe that these methods were effective particularly in the waterboarding of coolies shaikh mohammad however i do want to point out senator john mccain just agreed and here's what he said about it. many advocates of these techniques of asserted their use on terrorists in our custody particularly khalid sheikh mohammad revealed a trail to bin laden the former attorney general of the united states michael mcconnell she recently claimed and i quote the intelligence that led to bin laden began with a disclosure from colleague sheikh mohammad who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding that is false. so again

locally jake mohamad believed to be water boarded one hundred eighty three times there are some officials who say that some information did come from him about that courier in pakistan but that that information came much later than any of these enhanced interrogation tactics were used interesting chris thanks for staying on top of this story that was christine friends out at the capitol our political correspondent. now to a mysterious space plane that the air force launched just a couple hours ago here it is the unmanned plane looks like a mini space shuttle the x. thirty seven b. launch from cape canaveral air force station in florida atop an atlas rocket the blast off was delayed for about two months as they worked out some technical glitches today's launch is the third in three years so far it's spent nearly seven hundred days in orbit in total the space vehicle is solar powered so it can stay in

space for hundreds of days at a time so what exactly is the spacecraft doing well we don't know for sure and that's because its mission remains a secret here's some of the video of the space plane when it landed in california several months ago some say it's meant to spy on us adversaries others say it's equipped with gear to hack enemy satellites of another theory as it's performing scientific experiments in space whatever it's up to the secrecy surrounding the missions is stirring some suspicion. well now on to a story that seems to be repeating itself another alleged shoplifter at a wal-mart store was killed by a store security last friday this time it was a wal-mart in houston shelley frey a twenty seven year old mother of two was shot by a security guard who suspected her and the two other women in the car of shoplifting she died shortly afterward now this is the second time in as many weeks that wal-mart security has killed an accused shoplifter this isn't the only

controversy surrounding the nation's largest retailer in two thousand and twelve alone we've seen a bribery scheme to gain a stronger foothold in mexico a slew of worker strikes and lockouts and the deadly back to reste fire in bangladesh where it was discovered that it won't part produces its clothing line despite all of that how has that affected wal-mart's profits well it's easy easy to overcome scandal if you've got some of the most powerful people the ear of some of power those. people in the country take a look at some of the members of wal-mart's board of directors these are just three of the seventeen people on wal-mart's board all of whom are movers and shakers in the world of business and these three have also been tied to numerous other top companies and government agencies over the years and don't forget a former member hillary clinton while her husband was governor of arkansas this is from a new york times article back in two thousand and seven explaining our seven years on the wal-mart board of directors continued to play

a part in her life quote mrs clinton maintains close ties to wal-mart executives to the democratic party and the tightly knit arkansas business community her husband former president bill clinton speaks frequently to wal-mart's current chief executive h. least jr and it's not just their board of directors momart is also a founding member of an organization called business forward which is dedicated to quote help bring more business leaders into the policy making process but do we really need more business leaders in the policymaking process to discuss this i'm joined now by rachel curteous a producer here at r t so rachel can you tell us more about this organization move forward sure so business forward is essentially an organization designed to make sure that business leaders get the chance to speak to high level government officials and luckily for us jim doyle the president and founder of business forward was on c.-span this morning so i thought it might be

a good opportunity to let him explain a little bit more what he thinks business forward is. what we do is we bring business leaders from around the country to brief the president of the economic teams and everything from health care reform to immigration reform fiscal the fiscal cliff into. intellectual property protection and the business leaders are speaking for themselves generally speaking business leaders are centrists their data driven their results oriented and they are looking for compromise in washington. so there's sensually a couple more than forty companies involved in business forward in their job and business ford itself is involved in coordinating all of those business leaders and making sure that they have the opportunity to speak to government officials interesting so we see some of the big players here it doesn't sound like a bad idea for businesses you know to want to have more of a say and more access to the government to kind of voice their issues they have

course have a have a big impact on the economy is there a conflict of interest is there a problem there well if you're a business leader certainly why why not have the ear of a senior white house official i entirely understand why businesses would want to form business forward and be a part of it however as as a citizen it's a little bit more alarming right i mean government should talk to big businesses like wal-mart like comcast they're affected by government regulation and certainly they're huge employers in the country but the problem is that they already have so many opportunities to talk to the government anything from political contributions to the fact that one founding member lockheed martin you know they have lucrative government contracts a lot of these presidents and business leaders already speak in front of the house of representatives in the senate with great frequency plus they have huge lobbying arm so you know and then so what we see is that it's a bit alarming that these people have even more of an opportunity to talk to the

government even more access to these senior white house officials when that's already kind of the status quo that they already have a lot of open avenues to speak to the government so and in addition you look at something like comcast that's the majority owner of n.b.c. so not only do they have the opportunity to speak to white house officials on a pretty regular basis but they also have a lot to do with the coverage of the way that government is seen by a lot of people in the country so that's why i think a lot of times when we look at the really close relationship between government. and big business often the mainstream media isn't there alongside with us so we see that you know the big businesses they have access to special access to the white house and of course they can kind of push their agendas forward and advocate issues that will benefit them but sometimes not really be in the best interest of the average joe could those interests be at odds yeah i think that's

a great question so for instance the citizens for tax justice so the twenty six major companies in two thousand and eleven actually paid negative tax rates in two thousand and eleven that's i mean you know negative tax rates i mean i pay what thirty five percent i know that my taxes are way higher and i make a lot less money than save arisan who pay negative taxes so i think. it is definitely important as you said for these businesses to be able to talk to the government but you know these employers certainly have different perspective say than their employees are than other people in the country who already because they don't live in washington d.c. because they don't have that much money because they might not even be attuned to government processes. they're just kind of left out in the dark so people don't know what the fiscal cliff is how can they best advocate for what they need from senior white house officials it just becomes too difficult for them and then it becomes more of an echo chamber for people in washington d.c. these white house officials think oh there's

a very broad consensus on what we need in terms of tax rates just because they've spoken to fifty people but if all fifty people are business leaders then they're not getting that much diversity of opinion interesting so this high powered group business forward can you tell us what exactly they are advocating sure so jim doyle and c.-span went into this a little bit this morning if we want to show that. given how closely we came to go on of the cliff last time they're taking much more active role i think the way i like to describe his business leaders have come to washington to. require a minimum order to set a minimum height standard. for the ride of the fiscal cliff they want to make sure that members of either party who are speaking out are as close as possible to simpson bowles talk about real cuts talk about real revenue there is much more of an ownership of the process this time. did you catch that liz he said there seems

more of an ownership of the process this time and he wasn't talking about legislators he was talking about business leaders so typically when you think of ownership you think of you buy something and then it's yours so you know i'm sure he wasn't saying we bought out the entire political process so that we own it but he's essentially saying that we have so much influence now that we feel a sense of ownership over these talks are going to go ahead yeah we own this talk so even though business forward claims that they themselves are not advocating for anything in particular they are just a medium that allows business owners to speak with senior white house officials other government officials their advocacy is certainly on behalf of the government getting to say what they'd like to say you know it's interesting because we see this strong relationship between the obama administration and this group of businesses some of the biggest businesses in the u.s. . yet it was seemed like during the campaign they

a lot of them were in support of mitt romney at least you know mitt romney made himself out to be the business guy the one that had the business experience and could kind of back back that right yet he was the business guy and barack obama was the radical redistributionist or something like that but even even if that's kind of what a lot of republicans were saying barack obama was always pretty good to big business i mean in two thousand and eight versus john mccain it was barack obama who is reeky reaping in all of the bounty from wall street so i think that a huge takeaway here is that big businesses are pretty bipartisan they know how to play the market and they know essentially you can't bet the farm on one group so you see a lot of big businesses donating equal amounts essentially canceling out their donations by donating equal amounts to democrats and republicans a lot of the time because they essentially see no matter who wins we want ownership over that process really interesting telling us all about it that way. our producer

rachel currency us. well still ahead here on our talk about throwing privacy under the bus homeland security is helping cities across the country install recording devices on public transit all to record your roadside chatter well tell you why is the word next.

oh so there's a disconnect what's officially reported what actually happened we can accept is something to do a little. well it's like surveillance these days just keeps getting more it advanced we are learning government officials are installing high tech audio surveillance systems to buses across the country take a look according to the daily these are the high definition cameras as well as sophisticated audio surveillance systems being installed on public transit each of

each bus has six of them so far officials have approved nearly five point nine million dollars in contracts to install the devices on over three hundred fifty buses and trollies and san francisco they're part of homeland security is funding the program baltimore and concord north carolina also have the cameras with microphones onboard and several other cities are looking to install them so does this make us safer and what does this mean for your privacy from our michael brecker a reporter for the daily he joins us now hi there michael so first off can you tell us more about this technology and and how it all works well there's nothing terribly sophisticated about the devices themselves these are audio microphones attached to the surveillance cameras that many transit riders are already will accustomed to seeing all over the place not just in you know buses and trollies but but even in city streets these things it really is rooted since nine eleven.

and they're attached to devices that are simply record store transmit the audi you along with. the traditional video surveillance footage that people are used to seeing. interesting and can you tell us about why you know san francisco has has them on hundreds of their buses what exactly is the goal of having this technology on board their buses. well transit officials will will tell you different things including protecting the safety of the driver. sorting out complaints from passengers that sort of thing. privacy experts have different concerns that when linked with other sorts of technologies that we're all familiar with and some that are in development such as racial recognition software

g.p.s. devices and a number of other technologies on the market already or are coming to market that this can lead us down. one step closer to. tracking individual. citizens in. not just you know connecting their movements to the things that they say which is traditionally been held to a different standard by the courts. you know people are used to having cameras you know when they go into a convenience store are even on buses having cameras that record what you're doing but having the audio there record your conversations what does that mean in terms of people that are concerned about their privacy i mean does it kind of just take it take it out a step further. both of the privacy laws to said this at a different dimension if one thing to be able to see someone moving around is a different thing to be able to hear with their what they're saying and so i mean

at this point you know we're seeing surveillance getting more advanced and we've been reporting a lot about how van surveillance everything that they're coming out with at this point is there any rules or regulation that to state how the information recovered using the technology how it can be used and does a seventy minutes. the those laws remain to be tested in the courts in a process that will go on for quite some time i mean to underscore the point of how this is different think about a person watching. this broadcast that we're doing right here right now they can see your face they can see my face our mouths are moving but how do you. different dimensions kind of like you know we're talking about it as a her as a whole nother whole other aspect on other element another another thing to monitor

i guess. another interesting thing i did want to bring up is the potential for big businesses to profit off of this in the contracts how much would you say the private sector does stand to gain. well that's a really interesting question and it gets to the heart of how we put this story together i'm lucky to have an editor at the daily really mark ne jame but i really noticed you know this is a report in the local media about one of these programs in. baltimore and we decided to check it out to see what kind of. go for this was you know really across the country this is something that is happening in other places when i started speaking with experts on surveillance and privacy last one thing that came up in one of the conversations was well if government if a government entity as a transit agency is buying this stuff there's someone who's selling it to them from there we went looking for german documents from government agencies all over the

country and then went looking for the companies that are that are marketing these things and you know that the number that you if you threw out earlier that five point nine million dollars contract overhaul san francisco's surveillance system that's one city so. we found through our reporting that these are going on all over the country. and and moreover in the day or so since come out. to become apparent that the been going on for quite some time it's just never been put together and. reported publicly before so in other words there is somebody that's making money off of this tech this technology bit the surveillance technology i do want to mention the cities that are looking to install these systems we have new jane oregon traverse city michigan columbus ohio hartford connecticut athens georgia all of these cities across the country looking to install these systems are you were you surprised at how widespread it's becoming or

how many cities are looking into making this part of their public transit system. you know those are cities that are that are at different stages of installing or upgrading their systems and they're trying to give you examples to sort of demonstrate the breadth both you know from big cosmopolitan places like san francisco to small college towns like japanese georgia just to get a sense of how widespread this is and the justification of course michael is that this is making us safer is there any proof that that's in fact what it does i mean doesn't make us safer it's hard to know. i believe that the experts weigh in on. a very interesting you and thank you very much for telling us all about your findings that was reporter for the daily michael brick thanks for everything and we are going to leave it off there but i

say to her breaking the set that's coming up and just a half hour will be right back here at eight pm see that. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i want to tell the truth. because as in i am a total get over friends that i love brad because he's excellent and pretty. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very religious you know it's a place. here

is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my country you sir are a fool you know what that is my other terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to keep us safe to feature is a monkey on wimpole the christian public. can secure beliefs of others that. are going to suffer to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that.